


Debrief

by Moths_Spiders_Books



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-24
Updated: 2017-04-24
Packaged: 2018-10-23 15:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10721709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moths_Spiders_Books/pseuds/Moths_Spiders_Books
Summary: Statement of Charlotte Roberts, as per debrief requirements. Extract to be added as supplementary to personnel files of  Matthew Parker and Dianne Brendan. Sealed copy delivered to the Magnus Institute as per their request.





	Debrief

**Author's Note:**

> Another tumblr transplant! After this glut I won't be posting fic for a while.

...the Magnus Institute was an interesting first callout. I was a little intimidated, sure, but not scared. I was with a bunch of old hands who assured me that it would be probably be very creepy but no actual people had died so that was alright. Matthew and Dianne were swapping jokes about it, saying maybe they’d found a creepy clown in the drain or something. But when we got there the fire alarms were blaring and everyone was standing around. No one looked freaked out, just...wary. Distant. I don’t think they knew what was going on. Were they waiting for something like this to happen? They stood there with their cups of takeaway coffee and just stood there, not talking. It was weird.

To be honest the people were weirder than what we found inside. It was gross, sure. All those worms and the body of that lady all full of holes, half bursting with worms. And those worms were everywhere. But I used to do clean up for the city councils, cleaning out pensioner’s flats after they’d been dead for months and someone had finally noticed the smell. What’s a bunch of dust-covered worms compared to someone’s forgotten Granny and her sixty dead cats? People used to joke about my lack of smell.

They took the two guys away. They were pretty messed up. Not as bad as the woman who was basically a sieve. They were alive, though. They got hustled away to quarantine., leaving little droplets of blood like red flowers among white dust. The worst thing was how they were twitching. That’s what stayed with me. They had to strap them to the stretchers. Actually, can you redact that last bit from the official report? I’m sure you know all that already. It feels like...a violation, sort of. It’s different when you’re going through someone’s shitty house, tripping over their piles of skin mags and emptying out their bedside drawers. Your knowing that they were into some weird shit or lived off custard or couldn’t reach the toilet anymore doesn’t hurt them. 

But if they’re alive...they’re walking around not knowing that you’ve seen them so helpless.I never liked that. Couldn’t stand it. Can’t stand it. It’s why I took my strong stomach over to doing clean up for murders rather than to being a nurse or something. That’s why looking at those guys on the stretchers gave me a bad feeling, and why I volunteered to cook Prentiss with Jordan Kennedy. Not much to say about that. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and she turned to charcoal just like everybody else. 

I ended up having to go into the quarantine area anyway. They needed someone to handle the worms that didn’t go to the labs. Yeah, the ones that came out of those two guys. They were still pretty out of it. I don’t want to talk about that. I caught glimpses of them through the sheets of plastic. I tried to go into where they were keeping the waste but Dianne and Matthew had apparently handled it. They turned me around pretty quickly. Matthew had his phone out, which was weird. We’re not supposed to have them out when we’re on call. 

 

The end of the shift came at about midnight so we all got to take taxis home. The three of us live in the same area, so we got shoved into the same one. I sat in the front. Dianne and Matthew were really good mates and they kept laughing. You need a bit of gallows humour to be in our line of work to get along but this didn’t sound like that. It sounded...mean. You know what I said before about knowing things about people you shouldn’t? Yeah. In the reflection of the windscreen I saw Dianne show Matthew something on her phone, and I heard them both laugh. That’s the only thing I saw that I could positively connect to all that stuff you were talking about before I had that last conversation with Matthew. 

I was there for all the other stuff, though. Dianne turned up to work exhausted and in tears, talking about someone looking through the windows of her house. We were all pretty sympathetic, because it’s a shit thing to happen and this job can be stressful. But then she kept talking about it, kept saying that there was someone there. Look, I know you send out people to check out things on the quiet, so I’m pretty sure if there was something there it would have been sorted in the six weeks or so that this was going on. I know people started making fun of her behind her back. 

I don’t think that’s why she did it though. She didn’t notice. Too wrapped up in herself, too scared of her “prowler.” Eventually she moved out, moved to her Mum’s, and that’s where she did it. The last conversation she had with anyone was about how it was going to follow her there. I did feel bad about that. She was genuinely frightened. Even if what you’re saying she and Matthew did is true...no, obviously what you’re saying they did is true. And it was an evil thing to do. I don’t know how else to describe it. Evil is such a stupid word, though, isn’t it? Callous is better. Take out the bit about evil, it’s too dramatic. 

Matthew was normal right up until he wasn’t. He took Dianne leaving pretty well, and didn’t even seem worried when we heard she’d killed herself. Then his phone started going off constantly. I know you must have had someone look into that as well. He must have gone through seven phones in as many weeks. And when he stopped keeping a cellphone, and I swear, every phone near him would start ringing. Nothing on the line, he said. Nothing in the text messages. Except when someone else would pick up. Then a voice would ask for him. Then silence. 

You know all of this, so I’m not sure why I’m having to tell it again. But anyway: he went insane one day. He smashed all the computers and all the phones and all the windows and all the mirrors. Was I too vague in the verbal interview about what he said to me before he jumped? If I was, it’s probably because it all happened so fast. He said something about being sorry for the pictures, and, realising what he’d done, I called him a bastard. He cried like some stupid kid. He was so sorry. Too late, I said to him. You can’t untake those photos. Then he did it and here we are.

You probably think I’m a bit callous, sitting here, writing this all down. Not even crying. I don’t believe in karma because the world’s not that tidy, you know? People are saying that you lot (management, I mean) did it to freak everyone else out into not doing anything like it again. Make us think there’s something supernatural going on, so when we get the really weird calls, no one’s even thinking of violating protocol. Could be, I guess. If it was you, I honestly don’t care. I mean, I don’t like people suffering. But I like I keep saying. We knew about those guys. We watched them twitch and writhe on those stretchers, out of their minds. They didn’t know that we know, don’t know what we saw, and that’s the thing. You don’t treat other people’s vulnerabilities as something to laugh about later. I heard from one of the doctors that if it been another fifteen seconds then those guys would have been maggot sponges and suffered all the way through it. 

So that’s pretty much that. I know I’m entitled to some counselling, so if you can always check in with my work approved therapist if you want to know anything more. 

_Notes to EB, only included in the extract approved for the MI:_

_Ms. Roberts has shown both the sangfroid and strong principles we appreciate in our employees, so should there be - although obviously one hopes not- another complex situation, you’ll be seeing her again. As for the reported rumours of management’s involvement in the deaths of her fellow employees - well, we can neither confirm nor deny, as per our NDA. Obviously we take breaches of privacy and protocol very seriously, and the rumours of a supernatural element may help, so anything you may want to circulate about this incident would be welcome._


End file.
